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so sorry. I tried your home number.’ Nowadays, Maggie Allan-Carlin always sounded apologetic. ‘Are you in the middle of something?’
    ‘No, what’s wrong?’ Something had to be.
    ‘It’s Bonsignore.’
    Leo hadn’t heard the name for a good while but his brain had turned it over so many times that it still sounded threadbare. ‘What about him?’
    ‘He’s dead.’

C HAPTER 7
    Without changing out of his uniform, Leo drove straight to the Allan-Carlins. Their palatial house was on the border of Shere, a small commuter-belt village outside London. His normal daily drive necessitated covering under a mile from Sable Electronics to his home on mainly empty roads so he’d been nervous about driving such a distance after a shift.
    Far from puncturing his exhaustion the news had left him as detached as he had been at the end of Bonsignore’s trial and, as the rain on the windscreen of the Saab got heavier, he resisted the temptation to turn on the wipers. Their rhythm had almost been fatal in the past – for him and other road users. He checked his rear-view mirror for a car but couldn’t remember what the colour of the last police surveillance vehicle had been.
    He speculated as to who would be sitting on the low leather sofa at the back of Chevalier’s at that very moment and then realised that probably nobody would at this hour of the morning. How many people would sit in that spot today though, the seat where he’d waited? How many would use the ladies restroom? A familiar treadmill of thought cranked to life.
    As the A3 took him through Epsom and he hadn’t identified any car as having accompanied him all the way, Leo realised that the last journey he’d made of any length was to the same location. He’d visited the Allan-Carlins at their home on a handful of significant occasions. A visit to Maggie and Joe was always a reminder of a shared loss but it was patently clear that it was only Maggie who willingly entertained his presence.
    She’d told him to come at once so they could watch things unfold on the news and if he wasn’t so indebted to them he certainly wouldn’t have been driving barely conscious along the wet and hazardous roads. He swung the car sharply into the turning that led off the A3 and zigzagged up the forest track that led to their impressive, Georgian home. To an outsider, it appeared that life had been very kind to the Allan-Carlins .
    Lights were on in every window and the door to their garage glided open as he pulled in front of the house. He parked the car and Maggie appeared through theside door. There was another marked decline in her appearance and it shocked even Leo. How long had it been since his last visit? It could only have been a matter of months. Now, her usually meticulously applied make-up was absent and her dark hair lay in uncombed disarray around her shoulders. Her complexion was as bloodless as his and served to highlight any blemishes. She wore loose-fitting, turquoise, fleece leisurewear and a pair of bright green crocs – he noticed her left hand was bandaged. She gave him a fragile smile as he got out of the car.
    If Maggie hugs me it means Laura is still breathing.
    Maggie put her good arm around him. She held him there without saying anything like she always did and he could smell the stale sweetness of alcohol – it wasn’t yet 9 a.m. Finally, she released him so he could follow her indoors.
    The door from the garage led directly into a brightly lit, tiled kitchen where Joe was scraping up broken fragments of crockery with a dustpan and brush. He looked up through his bushy grey eyebrows and nodded once at Leo. A ring of white hair clung to the sides of his head and a sprig under his nose sheltered from the rest of his patent baldness, but the only change Leo noted in Joe’s appearance was that he appeared to have shrunk a little more. He didn’t know if this was his imagination though because Joe’s presence was usually peripheral, circling